Every openSUSE user, that tuned graphic, used SaX2. The xorg.conf created with SaX2 has this line:
# Contact: Marcus Schaefer , 2005

Of course the sax2 is the best known, or better to say the most popular part of his work, but there is much more. The most recent project is KIWI that allows relative painless creation of distribution images (CD, DVD, USB memory stick, … ), and the KIWI is what powers up the SUSE Studio, powerfull and easy to use image creation service.

Nicknames:	schaefi
Homepage:	http://www-ms.homelinux.com
Blog:	openSUSE blog
Favorite season:	summer
Motto:	live is a beach(volleyball)

Please introduce yourself!

I was born into a family with a close touch to nature in the Alps region town of Isny at Allgäu, in the German state of Württemberg. My father Wolfgang Schäfer is a technician and an example for me from the beginning on. My mother Susanne Schäfer is a sportswoman, she always encouraged me to keep on running. My parents gave me full freedom in my decisions and so I decided to became an assistent in physics before I studied computer science. Sport is an elementary part of my life. I always find freedom, friends and a balance to business in sports. My favourites are beachvolleyball and cycling. March 26th 2008 is the year I became a father which was the biggest change in my life followed by my marriage with my wonderful wife Daniela in 2007. Our son Florian is as sweet as a boy can be and I’m excited to see our young family growing

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

I studied computer science at the university of applied sciences in Isny in Allgäu. The atmsphere there was more like in a family and I had the chance to take part in several admin projects which forms the background of my first real use of a computer.

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

I started using Slackware Linux at home in 1996 even though you first had to compile a kernel with your cdrom driver included to be able to start the installation I found that Linux rocks.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

I think it was around 1998 when S.u.S.E. offered me a job as an intern and I started my first opensource project called sax. That was the time when I learned how important it is to have users and people supporting you in your effort.

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

The openSUSE Build Service relies on a cluster of build nodes which creates the packages from the projects. I have implemented an appliance builder and the PXE infrastructure to easily create and deploy the nodes for building the packages.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

As the name says it’s open and along with Novell’s enterprise strategy it’s important for me to be part of an open community too.

What would be your the most important contribution to the openSUSE project and community, or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

I think the fact that SUSE is the only distribution which has a unique and fully functional X configuration utility over the last 10 years is something I’m a bit proud of

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

More often than my wife likes it

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

Simply trust the geeko

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

I don’t know exactly but I think the expert knowledge at SUSE is somewhat unique and surely underrated

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

I hope that the open source community believes in us that the name “open”SUSE really is meant serious and that the name SUSE stands for an open distribution as well as for the base of enterprise products. The opensource community is the most important value an operating system can rely on.

A person asked you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS.

I always encourage people to use openSUSE because with the distro they also get the expert on their side

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

The most often Adrian sitting in the server room freezing and many others working in the Nuremberg office.

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

One.

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

vi, you know why

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

The Studio Marketplace

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

vi, don’t ask why

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

Peter Anvin, he rocks.

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

I would wish to know more about networks, network security and firewalling.

The Internet crashes for a whole week – how would you feel, what would you do?

Hey there’s git, no problem to proceed coding

Which is your favorite movie scene?

Ice Age, when Scrat meets Scraty

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Trek

What is your favorite food and drink?

Spätzle mit Soß und dazu a Clemens

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

Monkey Island

Which city would you like to visit?

Boston

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

At the beach playing beachvolleyball

Someone gives you $1.000.000 – what would you do with the money?

It will not happen so sorry can’t tell you a good answer

If traveling through time was possible – when would we be most likely to meet you?

Somewhere in the future

There’s a thunderstorm outside – do you turn off your computer?

I never turn of my computers

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

To my shame yes more than one time

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

I’m thinking of sharing a picture of my sweet boy with the world. But I will wait until he is old enough to be able to agree to that

You couldn’t live without…

Mikasa

Which question was the hardest to answer?

This one

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

There are many questions I don’t have a good answer for, so better don’t think too much about it

I have limited need for Samba which is the most often used way to connect Windows and Linux networked computers, so I couldn’t miss openSUSE wiki article. Wiki can edit anybody, so check who are the authors is part of routine, and I looked at Lmuelle.

He has universal views on Linux and openSUSE, and as you going to see, you can agree with many of them.

Nicknames:	Lieschen
Homepage:	http://samba.org/~lmuelle
Blog:	No blog (yet). I’m already talking to much. But thanks for the suggestion. A blog would allow more communication without the need to listen. At least if the opportunity to comment is disabled.
Favorite season:	Spring and winter.
Motto:	“Always in motion” as (I hope) I never stand still.

Please introduce yourself!

I’m 39 years old and was born in Kassel, Germany. After school I moved to Goettingen to study. At hat time I got in contact with UNIX systems at the data center of the university and even got my first SUSE CDs created by the well known Eberhard Moenkeberg.

In 2000 I started to work for SUSE at the support department and got involved into the development of SUSE based business products like the fabulous eMail Server. For a short time I even tried to work in the product management team, but for the everyones peace I changed back to the technical side.

Later I got part of the server technologies team and I focused on the integration of Samba into different SUSE based products.

After the acquisition of SUSE by Novell all people working on Samba got merged into the Novell Samba Team which is part of the SUSE Labs department. Samba article on the openSUSE Wiki provides an overview of what we’re doing and how it’s possible to contribute.

In 2005 the Samba Team invited me to join and I’m still happy and proud of being part of this highly motivated group of developers. Even after many years it’s still exciting to meet other Samba developers and our users, like recently at SambaXP.org.

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

I started to use computers at school at the age of 10. IIRC this had been a system made by Olivetti and we used magnetic strips to store our data and programs. Next there had been Sinclair ZX81, Atari 600 XL, Commodore 64 and an Amiga. The next step (back?) was some i386 system when I had to prepare some papers at university.

Today I’m performing all my work with a openSUSE 11.1 workstation. Thanks to the virtualisation features provided by modern CPUs I’m able to run even Microsoft systems without the need of closed source, binary only software on the infrastructure level.

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

1996 IIRC with S.u.S.E. Linux 4.2.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

I’ve started to provide recent Samba binaries for SUSE based products several years before the openSUSE project was born. But the openSUSE Build Service (OBS) and its features convinced me to change the approach of creating packages as it is much, much easier.

We as the Novell Samba Team now are a simple consumer of the OBS and are quite happy about how easy it is for us to provide a recent and consistent Samba packaging service to SUSE users and even beyond.

But to answer your question it was spring 2008 when we started to use the OBS. We’ve tried several other approaches to provide Samba binaries before. But at the end OBS looked most flexible and provides many features in direction of collaboration. With my samba.org hat I would like to see getting more non SUSE developers involved.

But even before we maintained Samba on openSUSE to provide a starting point for Samba users of SUSE products. While doing this we always have the generic upstream Samba.org work in mind and put as much as possible
into the generic wiki.samba.org .

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

I’m trying hard to keep Samba in a good shape with openSUSE. Beyond this I sometimes touch some pieces of software I’m using myself.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

It’s the Open Source and Free Software approach which is driving me.
I’m mainly a technician but the level of freedom provided by this is a driving force to me.

What would be your the most important contribution to the openSUSE project and community, or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

Maybe the “cups options” parameter of Samba’s smb.conf which defaults to “raw” with the binaries we provide to our users. You no longer get a ‘Unsupported format “application/octet-stream”.’ message if you spool a print job to a Samba server configured this way. Hey, it’s even possible to “lpr /boot/vmlinux-2.6.27.21-0.1-default.gz”.

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

Hard to estimate as my daily work is a mix of Samba, openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise stuff. Sometimes it’s part of the daily work as a side effect. Sometimes it’s simply extra work as a free service we offer to the OSS community.

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

At the moment I’m heavily impressed by the directions the openSUSE Build Service stuff is going.
Therefore even for openSUSE “always in motion” counts.

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

Propper handling of the install of multiple kernels. Hell, that got addressed recently by zypper. Unfortunately smart and yum had this since quite some time, but one windmill lesser is always good.

Next please allow us to set the number of installed kernel packages – the default should be two – _and_ always keep the currently running kernel. Then it’s more likely we’re able to boot into a working system again.

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

More changes due to more new users. We have to face the standard, non technical user while keeping the system attractive to those using it since many years.

Even if this might sound like suicide I would drop the default decision agains one prefered desktop. The new users I have in mind don’t care about KDE, Gnome, fvwm2, or any other of the favorite window managers. They need a system with a TCP/IP stack and a working web browser. Maybe a multi protocol chat client (jabber, IRC, MSN, AIM) including video and audio is a must have.

Asking this type of users about which desktop system they would like to use is like asking the passanger of a train if they prefrer an engine from Siemens or Kraus Maffei. When a train arriving at the destination is their only goal. And with a computer the majority of users have the goal of getting the daily work done.

BTW, As I’m sitting mainly in my home office it’s very unlikely any of the desktop guys will kill me immediately.

A person asked you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS.

As I don’t care if you use openSUSE, Fedora, or Debian I’m not able to answer this type of question.

And even if _you_ decide to use Microsoft or any BSDish system it’s up to you.

But I always try hard to convince people to use Open Source Software cause by several reasons:
a) you’re independent and can’t be locked by a vendor,
b) you’re able to fix stuff without a particular vendor,
c) sharing goods saves resources,
d) I believe in a better technical result caused by the collaboration.

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

Much to many to remember. And I would forget an important one anyhow. I even can’t count the people which have slept on the Open Source Sofa in Nueremberg.

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

Zero. Else I would not be able to see these nice KDE 4 background pictures.
I’m currently using KDE 4.2.3 as available from the KDE:/KDE4:/Factory:/Desktop repo.

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

mutt and vim.

Cause else I would not be able to reply to your mail and to answer your questions.

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

See my comment on kernel updates before.

As soon as this is done the Open Source community should consider to implement a highly integrated directory based authentication service as it is provided by Microsoft’s Active Directory. No password caching please! I’m talking about Kerberos and friends. See Ralf Haferkamp’s mail on this topic with references to the SSSD project.

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

vim as I’m not able to use the ctrl key. No, no, no flames please.
I’m lazy and I’m using vi(m) since more than 15 years now.
And retirement is this close.

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

I would like to see people like Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky joining the OSS community. Independent if it’s Debian, Fedora, or openSUSE.

We need to get the attention of the masses. At the moment it looks like Apple is able to deal better with this.

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

Being able to quit emacs without the kill command. Honestly my firmware version is lacking many more important features. Maybe someone takes the time and teaches me to use gdb in a more efficient way.

The Internet crashes for a whole week – how would you feel, what would you do?

Happy for at least one hour. No new mails by bugzilla.

I would simply ask Tina for a good read.

Which is your favorite movie scene?

I have nothing in mind rigth now. Honestly it’s many years ago since I was in a cinema the last time.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

I’m 100% ignorant as I have no TV.

What is your favorite food and drink?

Cake, tea and coffee.

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

In the childhood the Amiga with Emerald Mine (IIRC) and nowadays it’s bash and vim.

Which city would you like to visit?

Madrid, Bangalore and Beijing.

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Hiking in the woods.

Someone gives you $1.000.000 – what would you do with the money?

That’s a hard question. I would try to make a conservative investment and split the outcome into several directions: real, sustainable development of the third world, fight against software patents, and support of medical science research.

If traveling through time was possible – when would we be most likely to meet you?

Somewhere in the future.

There’s a thunderstorm outside – do you turn off your computer?

No.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

Yes.

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

is a picture of the team which maintained the network in our old flat in Göttingen. You also see (one) of the laptops I later unintentionally killed by flooding it with milk. Yes, there are reasons why newer systems have these drains.

You couldn’t live without…

Tina, my significant other.

Which question was the hardest to answer?

The $1.000.000, cause I believe it would make my life much harder to decide how to deal responsible with the money.

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

The question? I don’t know.

Nicknames:	hendersj, jhenderson
Homepage:	Haven’t really got a current one; an old one is sometimes available at http://hendersj.dyndns.org but I haven’t updated it in a couple years.
Blog:	I have a couple. http://itcat.wordpress.com is one where I write about the topics of technical training, certification, and careers (”itcat” =3D “IT Certification and Training”). I post maybe an average of about 4 times a year there.
Favorite season:	Spring. Unfortunately it isn’t long enough here in Utah – I like the rainy part with temperatures in the upper 60-s and lower 70-s (Fahrenheit)
Motto:	I would be a toss-up between Douglas Adam’s quote about deadlines (”I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”) and something my dad was fond of saying about memory (”Memory’s the second thing to go…..Can’t remember the first.”) Our family motto is “We don’t do things like other people.” This comes from our propensity to do the unexpected – celebrating major holidays on days other than when the holiday happens, for example, or buying gifts for each other after the date has passed. We have a tendency to provide entertainment to those around us by doing silly things.

Please introduce yourself!

I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the US. I’ll be 39 years old this September, and currently reside in Salt Lake City, Utah, with my wife Amy Parker and our son Ken McClure. Yes, our
family name sounds somewhat like the name of a law firm (Henderson, Parker & McClure) – this is part of the reason for our family motto. We have three cats and look after a feral cat colony (we participate
in a Trap and Release program).

I’m currently the testing program manager at Novell, with responsibility for the business side of certification exams – in particular, our practicum exams. I worked in IT for about 15 years before coming to Novell, where I have worked in training and support, doing things ranging from teaching advanced eDirectory courses to managing programs and providing back-end support to the SysOps on the Novell Support Forums. I used to be a Novell Support Forums SysOp myself as well, specializing in NetWare and NDS/eDirectory.

I’ve also co-authored a couple of books (with Peter Kuo) on troubleshooting Novell’s directory service products (NDS at first and now eDirectory).

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

It all started with a Commodore PET when I was in elementary school back in the 70’s. Got my first UNIX exposure in the 6th grade, and in college some exposure to SunOS 4.2. I had also played around a bit with UnixWare after Novell acquired it from USL – I still have the discs somewhere in the basement. I pursued (but didn’t earn) degrees in Aeronautical Engineering and Aviation Computer Science, but it was while attending college that I was hooked by computer networking using Novell’s NetWare.

I use computers for a lot of things – I have interest in computer graphics, and am a long-time user of POV-Ray (though I don’t have a lot of actual artistic talent – at least I don’t think so). I participate in the POV-Ray community as well as the Novell and openSUSE communities. I’ve relatively recently started doing digital image processing (for fun) using my digital camera and the GIMP.

I love using computers to manipulate data. I use a number of tools to analyze data, but probably more than anything I use awk. I think awk is often an under-appreciated language for text processing, and often Perl is used when awk would probably be a better fit.

I also love flight simulation. I am a frequent flyer in X-Plane for Linux.

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

I started using Linux with RedHat 5.2 back in about 1998 if memory serves. I had used Ximian’s Red Carpet to keep it updated and that got me using the GNOME desktop (prior to that, I had used Enlightenment). I still use GNOME, but I don’t often understand why there is so much vitriol in the GNOME/KDE desktop environment debate. It’s just a DE – the important thing is the applications. The DE just enables you to run them and organize them. Both do a fine job, I think, it’s just that some are used to GNOME and some KDE – and some ICEWM, some FVWM, some Enlightenment – and so on.

I started using openSUSE with SUSE Professional 9.2, not long after Novell acquired SuSE. I’ve looked at others (I subscribe to Linux Format Magazine out of the UK, so get the discs and the chance to try many other distros running in VMware) but have never found a compelling reason to switch – I have 5 computers here in my home office that run versions of SUSE (mostly openSUSE 11.0, but two of them run SLES with Novell Open Enterprise Server on them). My wife and stepson also both use openSUSE, though Ken also runs Windows for some of his games. He prefers openSUSE on his laptop which he uses for his classes at the University of Utah.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

I’ve been a bit of a lurker in the openSUSE community for a while – I follow the mailing lists using news.gmane.org and the openSUSE forums. I’m a huge fan of using NNTP, prefering that to web forums or mailing lists – this lets me absorb a lot more information using a single program.

I’ve always felt that even as a user of openSUSE, I’m part of the community – and as a part of the community, I should give back in some way, whether it be helping others, just participating in general discussions, or helping nudge the community in ways that help users – new and long-time users – to do things better. The openSUSE community is a great community, but there’s always room for improvement. Continuous improvement requires continuous feedback, and I like to provide feedback when I think it can be valuable.

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

Mostly as a user of the software; when I run into problems, I report them using the tools available. I try to help out on the mailing lists (in particular) when I can.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

It’s difficult to say specifically. I think the people are generally good and try to be helpful. I like looking at new things, and I enjoy the process of troubleshooting my own problems as well as others’.

What would be your the most important contribution to the openSUSE project and community, or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

I like to think that I can be a voice of reason when things are getting loud. There are a lot of strong opinions in many of the groups, and sometimes it takes someone to stand up and say “you know, you both have good points here, but let’s focus on the issues rather than calling each other names, shall we?” I like to think that I can help cut to the core of an issue and help build a consensus on a path forward. I don’t know that I always succeed or that others see me succeeding that way, but I think a lot of time really important issues get lost in the noise of a handful of people yelling at each other, so I like to try to cut to the root of the issue and get people talking about the issue.

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

It’s hard to pinpoint a specific time; usually when I’m not doing other things (though often I’ll use it as a break from doing work).

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

Solid. Reliable. Dependable.

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

Hard to say, because I have a habit of finding what I need if it’s missing (I’m not afraid to build from source). Probably better support for Blackberry connectivity would be high on my list at the moment.

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

I think the future for openSUSE is bright. There is a strong community around it. The community doesn’t always agree on things, but I think disagreement in the community makes the community stronger. If everyone agreed all the time, the boundaries wouldn’t be pushed, and boundaries always need to be pushed.

A person asked you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS.
What would be your arguments to convince him/her to pick up openSUSE?

My normal approach to this type of question is a needs assessment – I find out what the person needs, and then explain how openSUSE provides that to them, if it does. I find I usually don’t have to convince someone who’s asking – if they’re asking, they’re interested, and they just need some assurance that what they want to do can be done using openSUSE.

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

I was introduced to Zonker at BrainShare a couple years ago by Ross Brunson. Uwe Buckesfeld (one of the OSF moderators) is a good friend of mine, as is Kim Groneman (also from OSF and the Novell Support Forums).

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

The fewer, the better. I don’t like a cluttered desktop on my computer; my real-life desktop is cluttered enough as it is. 20 on my 64-bit system, but I don’t actually use the desktop icons to launch things, I tend to use Alt-F2 – I type faster than I move a mouse, generally.

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

That’s hard to say. Life would certainly be more difficult if I didn’t have an awk interpreter, but I could probably cope if I was missing any specific application. I tend to “route around” deficiencies and look for alternate solutions if what I need isn’t there. I have some programming background (I wouldn’t call it “software engineering” background), so often times I’ll create what I need if it’s simple enough.

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

At the moment, I’d love for there to be a kernel driver for the Pinnacle PCTV HD Ultimate Stick, since I just got one at a good price and thought I’d read (before I purchased it) that there was support for it. Turns out it’s for the predecessor.

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

vi or gedit. Just what I’m comfortable with and used to using.

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

Stephen Fry. He’s already a big supporter of open source software, and I think it’d be extremely cool if he were advocating for openSUSE
specifically.

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

I wish I had some real skills in the area of video compositing and electronic music composition. I have taken classes (years ago) in music composition as I used to play the violin, but I don’t remember much of the theory any more. I like the idea of composing composite CG/Live Action into a single coherent scene, with proper lighting, textures, and everything.

The Internet crashes for a whole week – how would you feel, what would you do?

I’d probably go through withdrawl, but on the flip side, I’d probably spend more time at the gym.

Which is your favorite movie scene?

I’d have to say my favourite scene isn’t from a movie, but from a radio program. I’m a huge fan of the radio series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (but didn’t like the movie so much). One of my favourite scenes (for there are many) from the radio series is when Ford and Arthur are sitting on prehistoric Earth drinking some homemade booze, and the conversation goes:

Arthur: “But have you got an answer?”
Ford: “No, but I’ve got a different name for the problem!”

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Trek, but more at the DS9 end of the spectrum. Both Star Wars and Star Trek used technology to support a character story, but Star Wars was a relatively simple messiah/redemption story, and the characters generally didn’t have a lot of depth as a result. DS9 in particular had very complex character interaction and the characters themselves had a lot of depth.
I like when characters are not clearly “the good guys” or “the bad guys”, but when the lines are blurred. DS9 is about as close as the Trek franchise got to that ambiguousness, and even then, it was still pretty clear who the good guys and the bad guys were.

The latest iteration of Battlestar Galactica is the type of thing I really like in Science Fiction storytelling.

What is your favorite food and drink?

Both vary, but I really like curries, especially homemade. For drink, tea and VitaminWater are what I usually have.

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

Had an Atari 2600 when growing up, and really liked playing Pitfall on it. On the Commodore 64, I probably spent more time playing Seven Cities of Gold and M.U.L.E. than any others. Today it’s mostly X-Plane and Sudoku.

Which city would you like to visit?

Never been to Sydney, Australia. There or Edinburgh, Scotland. Or Dublin, Ireland. Prague also intrigues me; I’ve been a lot of different places already; I wouldn’t mind going to Moscow again, or Kiev, or St. Petersburg – I would like to see more of the Hermitage Museum.

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Relaxing. I don’t like coming back from vacation needing a vacation to recover. I like seeing things, but on a lazy schedule rather than
trying to cram too much into a day.

Someone gives you $1.000.000 – what would you do with the money?

Pay off debts, travel a bit, invest a bit, give to worthy charities.

If traveling through time was possible – when would we be most likely to meet you?

Probably in the future, looking to see if things are the way I think they are. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the past, too, particularly in, say, the Middle Ages in Europe.

There’s a thunderstorm outside – do you turn off your computer?

Generally no, though I have had a computer struck by lightning before.
I have a couple of UPSes to protect my equipment now, but if the storm gets really bad, I might unplug things.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

Many, many times.

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

OK, I’ll attach that as well. The picture is a photo of the mountains to the east of the Novell campus in Provo, Utah. I enhanced the image myself using the GIMP as an experiment in just general image manipulation, and I really liked how it turned out.

You couldn’t live without…

My wife. We’ve been married 13 years, and every day she means more to me. I can’t imagine or remember life without her.

Which question was the hardest to answer?

Identifying my contribution to the openSUSE community. It’s sometimes hard to know the impact one has on those around them, whether in the
real world or an online community.

Well, that and the next one.

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

Q:

What do you like to do when you’re not working on a computer?

A:

Watching TV (though I don’t watch a lot, I prefer movies), working out at the gym. I like hiking in the mountains, but it’s been a while since we’ve been able to do that – there is some amazing scenery out there.

His development home is suser-jengelh/, or recently added http://jftp.medozas.de/. The Build Service repo j-engel belongs to another person – Johannes Engel.

Jan mentioned that openSUSE 11.1 users don’t have RT kernel due to difficulties with 2.6.27 that prevented it to be ready by release date, but he provided alternatives 2.6.25-RT and 2.6.29-RT that can be found in either of his repositories.

Nicknames:	jengelh
Homepage:	http://jengelh.medozas.de/
Blog:	The right half of the home page
Favorite season:	Any is fine, as long as it does not precipitate more than a drizzle.
Motto:	See: The Rules of Acquisition
	(StarTrek fans see here)

Please introduce yourself!

Systems Administrator/Software Developer located in Goettingen, Germany. Reaching his mid-twenties. Likes to travel, though does not get around too often. Otherwise biking. 1 cat.

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

It started sometime in 1991 when I used a HighScreen KOMPAKT Serie II 286 (4.77 MHz, 640K, 3.5+5.25 FD, no HD, 720×480 mono graphics, DOS 3.3/Windows 2.1). Most important for my age at that time – the (now) classic games to kill time!

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

Fall 1999, when I wanted to do more sophisticated HTML form processing that was infeasible without server-side support – this required getting onto a Linux server, and working with Apache and Perl. The systems in school were a mix of SL 5.3, 6.0 and 6.1 at that time.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

2000 then or so. Community was a loose concept then due to SUSE’s closed nature in the past, but it was pretty much the chattering #suse. Going there for curiosity and out of having nothing else to do.

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

Bug reporting; making available additional RPM packages that I find useful. Sort of QA for the RT – a real time kernel – rpm (see below) I create.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

SUSE has the best defaults for console programs for me. The motivation for bug reports? Because bugs impact whatever I wanted to get done originally. Creating packages is mostly a time saver for myself – one day, manual compilation of additional programs became too time expensive, also since the number of machines I wanted to distribute it to also increased.

What would be your the most important contribution to the openSUSE project and community, or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

People seem to like the implicit stability assurance of my RT kernel rpm. The openSUSE one was not always without issues. And you know the mantra: the more eyeballs, the less bugs.

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

Uh, don’t we do that always? Running openSUSE means testing it as a side effect.
Proactively working on openSUSE, hm, whenever I feel motivated or there is user demand, including my own, for something, e.g. new version of a package.

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

The Linux for Professionals.

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

If I only look at the top votes on openFATE – they are for “disable
beagle/pulseaudio by default” – Novell/SUSE should pay more attention to the users.

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

SUSE was, and I hope it will continue to be, the “Linux for Professionals”. (Sounds like it could have been a slogan for the SUSE 8/9.x series; I picked it again.)

A person asked you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS. What would be your arguments to convince him/her to pick up openSUSE?

Just because someone claims a distro is good does not mean it is – you should see and decide for yourself. So you are not going to hear something like “it is because we have $software_du_jour”.

First and foremost, SUSE provides the best ground for my daily activities. Part of that may simply be the customization I added for myself – I always miss that when having to log onto others machines, but the more so when going for non-SUSE boxes.

More importantly, SUSE gives me sort of a security assurance, as it is backed by Novell, and I can reasonably expect that they know what they are doing (especially in light of the 2008 Q3 openssl issue elsewhere).

And lastly, since I am not terribly interested in other distributions, choosing a distro other than the one I happen to use lowers one’s chance of getting free support from me when it comes to a distro-specific question.

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

Eberhard Moenkeberg, Christoph Thiel, Andreas Jaeger, Jan Blunck, Daniel Gollub, Stephan Binner, Martin Lasarsch and more.

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

Ha! I can say I am proud to be one of the users to have exactly ZERO icons on their desktop, simply because… icewm does not come with a desktop to dump icons on. As a side effect, you have more time enjoying the backgroud picture.

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

Coreutils, not specifically GNU, but the toolset Unices provide.

Why, because it is damn useful in getting the most basic tasks you would not normally think about done. You only realize how important it is once you are on Windows and do not have one of the MSYS/Cygwin environments available.

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

An Office Suite that does not require tons of memory or disk space.

There is a commercial offering that does satisfy this requirement (ad: SoftMaker), but in light of the question the Honorable Community asked me here I should perhaps add the adjectives “free/open” for my above answer.

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

I dual-use joe and mcedit. I seem to remember that joe 2.x (shipped with SUSE Linux <= 9) did not have coloring support, which made mcedit my primary choice to work with, also because it was integrated with mc.

I was a big time user of nc on DOS before entering the Linux world. However, mcedit lacks split-screen editing and filtering, and UTF-8 is still a patch/development branch as of mc 4.6.2, your question really makes me consider porting my mcedit code to joe. But investing time is a hurdle

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

There is already a distro that lives mostly on its PR, and I don’t like it. I do not want openSUSE to go down that road, as quality would undoubtedly suffer.

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

The gory details of memory management in the Linux kernel.

The Internet crashes for a whole week – how would you feel, what would you do?

If it were for the entire Internet and not just for my at-home link, then that would be superb. Everybody, well almost everybody, will get some time for themselves.

I would probably do what I do anyway, developing software. Absolutely
no problem with a DSCM like Git.

Which is your favorite movie scene?

The intermissions in the middle of each of the two main Ghost In The
Shell movies.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

ST:TNG

(ed. comment: Start Trek: The Next Generation)

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

I do not spend much time playing games, and the focus also rotates time and again. Additionally, there are so many different good ones. I also prefer “classics”, and almost entirely ignore “modern” things and everything that exceeds the capabilities of my current
hardware.

I feel that this short list is already too long.

- 2D JNR: Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Crystal Caves
- 3D Flight: Descent, Radix Beyond The Void, Fury3, LHX
- 3D FPS: ZDoom, UT99
- Simulation: SimCity, openTTD
- Puzzles: Speed-solving Solitaire, Minesweeper or Mahjongg
(not the Chinese one, but the Western tile-matching)

What is your favorite food and drink?

Pizza without baking agent. Semi-frozen (no ice cubes!) Bitter Lemon, iced tea, fruit juices or similar drinks.

Which city would you like to visit?

Tokyo.

In fact this is now scheduled for May (2009). A dream comes true

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Call it “urban/rural reconnaissance”. It is one’s own very personal way to explore or revisit areas of particular interest. It is pretty much distinct from “standard” sightseeing – one indication you are on recon is when none of the souvenir dealers near $attraction start
talking to you

Someone gives you $1.000.000 – what would you do with the money?

Figure out how much I will get after taxes are deducted (if applies)
and make a living as usual.

If traveling through time was possible – when would we be most likely to meet you?

The statistically highest chance to find me is during the time that I actually live in now. You would not know the temporal coordinates I would be traveling to unless I told you, and at this point I have no plans for vacation.

There’s a thunderstorm outside – do you turn off your computer?

I already have an UPS, due to:

* previous encounters (hard disks get damaged)
* bad electric stability in certain apartment buildings
* common thunderbolt hitpoint no more than 600m away.

So no — nothing ain’t interrupting my work no more.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

Too often. Mostly those in IRC (ironic, isn’t it).

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

It is all on the homepage – section “Images” and “Art/Scenery”.

You couldn’t live without…

People cannot survive without being needed by other people.

Which question was the hardest to answer?

Personal information. That is, well, personal.

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

– Favorite music style/movie type.

Answer:
I keep the Euro, (Happy) Hardcore, Goa and New Age channels from Digitally Imported in xmms.

Nicknames:	jdd
Homepage:	http://dodin.org
Blog:	I’m not really a blog man. However I have one for the LDP: http://jdanield.wordpress.com
Favorite season:	Spring or autumn. I don’t like hight temps – I can live with low ones
Motto:	When student, I used “Age quod agis” – do what you do. I probably follow this as much as I can even now

Please introduce yourself!

I was born in France January 1946. My mother was home wife, my father
was well know in the photographic world as inventor, specially for the
“verre dépoli télémètre” (telemetric frosted glass or stygmometer -
Lucien Dodin).

I’ve finished scientific college and teached mechanical engeneering for
a long time in french high school. I met computers as CAD drafter.

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

I had first contact with data processing using handheld calculator HP-41.
I was the chairman of the French Toulouse “PPC-T” Chapter, wrote a book about this calculator
in French, and was extremely proud to have it translated in English and published in USA.
Web version is here: Inside the HP-41

I had to programm machine langage utilities for this calculator,
writing to EPROMs to be able to run them. Hex programming BCD
calculation, 10 bytes word size… happy days

During this period, I had to use computers (not yet PC’s with CP/M
then MS-DOS. Then of course Windows (3.11 – the best one).

I met Linux in 1995/96 with a 486/8Mb ram computer Slackware and fvwm .

When and why did you start using openSUSE, or SUSE Linux?

Very early. The Red Hat version at this time was not so good, so I
started using SuSE. I still have the 1988 5.2 SuSE manual just next to me.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

I’ve tried nearly any mainstream Linux distro, specially Mandrake (Mandriva)
and Debian. I always appreciate SUSE friendlyness, so I joined
the openSUSE community right at the very beginning. After some month
of working with openSUSE I was asked to take in hand the french wiki
that had to be created.

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

I was the first sysadmin of the french wiki. I spent 6 month
translating pages to drive the project. I still work for the french
community, but as I write pretty fluently in english, I like to publish
first in English to have a better visibility.

In August, 2008, I was nominated as coordinator of The Linux Documentation Project (LDP).
At this moment I have few more admins for the French wiki and I let them do the main work,
and they do that very good.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

I think there is no other Linux project as friendly as openSUSE.

It’s like this from the SuSE beginning, the SuSE distribution was
always very friendly. I was afraid to lose this when Novell bought
SuSE, but finally Novell did a very good job in making the
distribution open source and free. With openSUSE one can have a lot of
free packages, tightly integrated with the distribution.

What would be your the most important contribution to the openSUSE project
and community, or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

Certainly the 6 month translation time I had, after the launch of the French
wiki. It was a specially hard work, having to learn Mediawiki, read
and test so many features. Debugging the new openSUSE was not as
friendly as it is now.

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

Since I’m retired, I read my mail early once a hour (say 5 time a
day), and try to help as much as I can. I think I can be pretty good
as teaching the newbies (after all, I was a teacher).

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

Three words is too little

The friendly Linux distribution that fits well the beginner and the
data center administrator.

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

The openSUSE is a bit too much oriented to modern computers.
For example, there is no more *cd* version, and I have yet many cd only computers
in my vicinity. Live CD don’t even launch is such computers, but openSUSE has a lot of
new ideas, and the ability to create dedicated CDs with “Studio” may solve some problems.

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

My main fear is Novell being bought by any other company, like SUN by
IBM (may be). openSUSE is too close to Novell, this is not good, but
we have no choice for now. The openSUSE works to find other sponsors, but this
is very hard in the difficult world we live in.

If openSUSE survive current economic crisis, its future should be great.

A person asks you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS.

What would be your arguments to convince him/her to pick up openSUSE?

Friendliness, package availability, good for anything.
openSUSE fits all needs! (oh, good slogan!)

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

None. Toulouse is far away and I don’t have money to travel to Bruxelle or Nuernberg.

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

12 and I have 8 desktops (identical).

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

Kpat? following the solver advice allows to never completely fail

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

48 hours per day?

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

The vim. I very frequently have to work on various Linux computers across
the net and for this VIM is the best choice. I can use tinyvi, but it’s a pain .

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

So many .

I met several times Richard Stalman.
See video made in Toulouse by my LUG.:Richard Stalman speaking..

I’m the man who walks behind table at the beginning of the video.
At the left side of the screen is G. Aznar, former LDP leader.

But I don’t think he could like openSUSE
But, do we need famous persons?

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

Many, specially administration related.
I can administer servers, but each time I spend days learning what to do.

The Internet crashes for a whole week – how would you feel, what would you do?

No problem. I can take 3 weeks vacation. Only my mailbox will have problems

Which is your favorite movie scene?

Right now?
“MammaMia” also “Lords of the Rings”, but favorite theater play is “Cyrano de Bergerac”.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Wars. I followed Star trek 30 years ago and I’m very fond of SciFi, but it’s too much.

What is your favorite food and drink?

Steak frites? (no translation possible

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

Final Fantasy. I bougth a PS2 just to play the last version

Which city would you like to visit?

Los Angeles. My daughter Claire just went there to work as an actress

I’m very proud of her. Her last movie is 2084. More you can find on Claire’s) web site.

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Wandering trough the Europe with car and caravan (and without computer).

Someone gives you $1.000.000 – what would you do with the money?

Travel? I would like to visit Egypt. My wife’s family is in West Indies, one of my daughters is in Los Angeles,
my son wants to go to Australia and the other daughter is a singer, so I have many people to visit and sponsor )

If traveling through time was possible – when would we be most likely to meet you?

I like present time. Past was often scary and future we don’t know…
Besides, I enjoy living in France: wonderfull country, good social covering, good weather…

There’s a thunderstorm outside – do you turn off your computer?

No. We had one recently, but my computer is a laptop so AC outage is not a problem.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

I easily missed my appointments when working (any kind of work).
I’m glad now that I have a cell phone with a very powerfull ring.

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

Nothing specially. As long as there is a Web, I can share all
what I want there.

You couldn’t live without…

A family.

Which question was the hardest to answer?

None

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

I don’t really like answering questions , but I do because I think it’s useful.

Nicknames:	saigkill
Homepage:	http://saschamanns.gulli.to (in German)
Blog:	http://lizards.opensuse.org/author/saigkill (in English)
	http://saschasbacktrace.blogspot.com (in German)
Favorite season:	spring
Motto:	Tempus fugit.

Please introduce yourself!

I’m 29 years old, living in Germany, single and I have a budgerigar.
I’m working as a merchant and I love to read books, blogs, everything, and to write.

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

My computer career starts in the 80’s with a Commodore C64. I have subscribed to a magazine called
“64er” and my first steps in programming were to write the listings from the magazine into the editor.
At that time I tried to write in BASIC and Assembler.

In the beginning with C64 there has no GUI and mouse, but then came GEOS to the C64, and from that time it
was possible to write in WYSIWYG .

In the school we had a computer training classes. We had a 286er with monochrome monitor.
At that time there was no Windows. We had the Word and Excel in a DOS Mode.
At the beginning of 90’s we’ve got a 386er computer with a color monitor and WIN 3.11.
That was a great improvement.

First experience with the network was with my C64 through an acoustic coupler.
We dialed a BBS telephone number (Bulletin Board System) short called “mailbox”.
In the mailbox it was possible to write emails, or post a message to the public board.
Later we’ve got real modems. My first was a 9000 bps, later on a 28000 bps and then 56000 bps modem.

In the beginning the Internet was great, no Flash or Javascript.
But now….

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

That was between 2000 and 2004. I bought an old SuSE version (6.X), but for me as Windows user
that was too difficult . I started officially with an Version 8.X.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

That was last year (2008). I have tested the UNSTABLE tree from KDE and posted bugreports.

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

I’m working in the Marketing Team, openFATE Screening Team and creating my own packages in the openSUSE Build Service.

Last week, I started a new project. I’ve created a German spoken version of the openSUSE Weekly News.
It is a part of the live broadcast. This week will come the issue #65.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

In my eyes openSUSE is the best distribution with optimum of stability and usability.
Then, I have found the great community.

What do you think was your most important contribution to the openSUSE project/community
or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

I think my work in the Marketing Team (Weekly News) and openFATE Screening Team.

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

Every day, if I have enough time.

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

Save your data, kill Conficker, use openSUSE.

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

My hope is, that the openSUSE Members can send submitrequests (OBS) in the openSUSE:Factory tree.

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

I think we have a good distribution where majority of needs are fulfilled and that is the reason that many
cities change their infrastructure to openSUSE/SLED.
I hope that more people will become a registered users, and so the community will grow up.

A person asks you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS.
What would be your arguments to convince him/her to pick up openSUSE?

I think openSUSE has an good usability, has YaST (great tool).
Everyone can build his own packages in OBS and the openSUSE branding is great.

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

I have met few people from the openSUSE desk in Frankfurt, but I don’t know their names.

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

17 + 16 in the Favorites Place from the KMenu.

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

Firefox and Kontact.

I’m using Kontact for all things (calendar own and remote, email mailing lists, RSS. and diary).
I have modified Firefox, so it can remove ads, disable scripts, and through ScribeFire I can blog.

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

kqlives (an Zelda-like game). I’m working actually on it in my OBS project.

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

For short things vim (like his handling) and for long changes I use Kate.
I like to have a good overview.

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

Barak Obama

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

I would like to learn C and C++ and Python.

The Internet crashes for a whole week – how would you feel, what would you do?

I think I would be nervous. No emails, no Weekly News, no OBS. No good perspective.

Which is your favorite movie scene?

In movie “Dead Poets Society”.
The scene at the end of the film when few guys stands up, go to the captain and say:
“O Captain, my captain”

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Trek (but only the version with Cpt. Picard)

What is your favorite food and drink?

Roasted chicken with chips and drinks are coffee and beer.

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

Maniac Mansion and Ultima.

Which city would you like to visit?

Prague and Moscow.

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Around May and Jun in Germany are festivals called “Night of the museums”.

During that festival museums are open from 18:00 to 03:00, and we can have one ticket for all museums.
I would like to go to Frankfurt.

Someone gives you $1.000.000 – what would you do with the money?

I’ll buy me a better monitor.

If traveling through time was possible – when would we be most likely to meet you?

Jesus Christ time.

There’s a thunderstorm outside – do you turn off your computer?

No.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

Yes.

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

Actually I have no good pictures

You couldn’t live without…

PC, TV and good books.

Which question was the hardest to answer?

What are you going to do with one million

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

– Why is your nick Saigkill?

This was a typing error. I wanted to write “sigkill”, but my fingers were faster and they are typed “saigkill”.
That’s all Folks…

We will attempt to give fair share to each part of openSUSE activity, addresing developers, testers, document writers, translators, art creators, user support on IRC, mail lists and forums, in marketing and many more. Most of them are known names, but we will also try to reach people that are not exposed to world wide public, but have significant contributions to openSUSE. They can be active in local user groups, or in languages other than English.

For this group we need your proposals with description of activity, some way to verify that, the way to contact person and translator if they don’t use English. You can file proposals on People of openSUSE, or you can subscribe to opensuse-marketing@opensuse.org and post proposal there. To subscribe please use links posted on the openSUSE wiki.

Anyway, Carlos the previous maintainer of the series can’t do it anymore because of time reasons. It would be a shame if we let it die … If someone from the community is willing to do that job? It could be even a small team, there is no strict schedule when to release an interview, and everybody will love you

If you want to do it, just head over to the openSUSE-marketing list, there will be a tread called “people of opensuse soon” …

Carlos: thank you for doing it for quite a long time!

Nickname:	vuntz
Homepage:	http://www.vuntz.net/
Blog:	http://www.vuntz.net/journal/
Favorite season:	All of them, depending on my mood I might have a slight preference for spring and autumn, though.
Motto:	Les gens heureux ne sont pas presssés. (hard to translate this right in english; maybe something like: happy people are not hurried)

Please introduce yourself!

I’m a 28 years old french (28 since a few weeks only, and it’ll take time to get used to this — probably 11 months). I live in Grenoble in France and work remotely from there.

I started playing with free software during my studies, and I got involved in GNOME in 2002. But don’t ask me "why did you choose this project", since I don’t really know why, except that I loved following the GNOME 2.0 development. I’m now heavily involved in various areas of the GNOME project — code, GNOME Foundation, release management, etc.

I’ve finished my studies last December, and I’m now working at Novell, on GNOME and on openSUSE.

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

I wouldn’t say I was always interested in computers that much, except for games. But 10-12 years ago, I got more curious to learn how computers and the OS work, and started tweaking stuff.

Then, I discovered that I could write applications and I’m still fascinated about how applications work: even though I know many technical details about how the software works, I still have this feeling that this is all some black magic. Especially when it’s a graphical application. I mean, seriously, if you think about it, how is it possible that writing some letters can produce something that works and that is interactive?

This is this fascination, and the intellectual challenge that you face when creating software (not just code, but in general), that got me hooked.

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

I started using openSUSE last February, when I joined Novell. I was using Ubuntu on my desktop before this switch, and I’ve also used Fedora for quite some time. Oh, and I’m also Debian-friendly

I must admit I have no strong feelings for/against distributions: as long as I can use GNOME, I’m happy! Of course, this has changed a bit since I got involved in the openSUSE development — I tend to have stronger opinions for openSUSE now (about things I love or things I dislike), and I try to push things the way I’d like them to be.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

It didn’t make any sense to me to work on openSUSE without being part of the community: the openSUSE project wouldn’t work well without its community. So I joined the community when I started working on openSUSE; it was — and it’s still the case — important for me to do most (if not all) stuff within the community, and not as part of Novell.

And after a few months, I applied for openSUSE membership, and I’m now a happy openSUSE member!

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

I do random things in the GNOME team. Packaging, fixing bugs, triaging bugs, some infrastructure work, etc. The thing I’m most proud of is the "osc gnome" plugin. I still need to push for the integration of some of the features in osc itself, but it’s a plugin which is really wonderful and helped us a lot in the GNOME team.

I happened to be part of the Election Committee, where I’m actually not doing anything (all the credit should go to Andrew, Claes and Marko). I’m just there to give my opinion since I’ve been involved for a long time in a similar committee for GNOME.

I’m also indirectly contributing to openSUSE by contributing to various upstream projects (mainly GNOME and some freedesktop.org things), but that’s another story, I guess.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

Heh, I guess I could say that I want to be able to use my desktop
There’s also the pride of seeing your work being used by other people. And of course, the community. The community is probably one of the most important factors: if you join #opensuse-gnome on Freenode, you’ll meet a bunch of friendly people, and that’s really what makes a difference.

What do you think was your most important contribution to the openSUSE project/community or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

Oh, I cheated and already replied. Oh, well, I guess I can do some shameless plug again: http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/OscGnome. Try it. I’m in love with it. Let me give a few more details about this plugin. There are a few cool features:

• it lets you easily know when there’s a new upstream version for a package
• it automatically does most of the steps to update a package to a new upstream version
• it makes it easy to setup a branch for a package
• there’s a simple command to commit your changes, wait for the remote build to finish and, if the build was successful, to submit your changes

Right now, it only works with a few Build Service projects (GNOME:Factory, X11:common:Factory, X11:Compiz, I belive). It’s possible to add more projects if people want — the only reason there’s only a limited list of projects is that it depends on an external server which has to periodically check out packages from the build service.

Did I say I love it?

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

That’s part of my day job, so, err, nearly every day

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

Green. Lizard. Rising.

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

I think we need some better promotion, so we can reach more people and get more users. And this will indirectly lead to having more contributors. The good thing with more contributors is that we’ll be able to fix most of our issues

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

I’ve never been good at predicting the future… So, err, joker

A person asks you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS. What would be your arguments to convince him/her to pick up openSUSE?

I would make this person try it. There’s no one-fit-all solution, and it can happen that someone doesn’t feel comfortable with it.

Then, I’d talk about the freedom and the community, and reply to questions. In the end, I think that most people don’t care that much about the technical details, so I wouldn’t argue much about them.

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

It’d be hard to name everybody, but I think I mostly met some Novell employees: the GNOME and KDE teams, and also some SUSE people from Nürnberg and Prague. The best opportunity to meet a lot of people from the community is certainly FOSDEM, but this year, I was too busy with the GNOME stand and devroom…

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

23, way too many. Some are there since a very long time and I just got used to them, so I don’t remove them

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

Hard question. I think it’s the ssh+screen+irssi+mutt combo. With that, I can feel at home from everywhere. I especially love mutt: I tried many mail clients (desktop apps, or webmails), but I always come back to mutt in the end. See also my preferred text editor below!

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

Either some mind-reading applications that would automatically write mails, blog posts, code, etc. or some technology that makes days last longer…

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

Heh, it’s vim, of course: you know you are addicted to it when you start pressing Escape in other editors… I’m just used to it, with all the keybindings that sounded so insane at the beginning and that are so natural now.

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

Don’t know. As much as having someone famous join the community would help boost the project, I think I prefer having non-famous people join. Like my friends or my family.

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

Not that I’m perfect with computers (far from it), but I’d prefer to have new non-computer related skills. Like being able to play music as if it were a second language for me.

The Internet crashes for a whole week — how would you feel, what would you do?

I guess I would start feeling bad the first day, because of many things I wouldn’t be able to do, and because I wouldn’t be able to communicate with many of my friends. And then, starting the second or third day, I’d probably take the opportunity to leave the computer and party with friends and have fun playing with them

Which is your favorite movie scene?

I don’t really have one. I think I love the scene in Being John Malkovich where all the people have a John Malkovich face.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Lord of the Rings? Okay, without cheating, that’d be Star Wars.

What is your favorite food and drink?

Drink: fruit juice. But a different one each time, if possible

Food: hmm, don’t know. Let’s just say "Salade lyonnaise" or maybe poutine

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

I’m a big Nintendo fan. And the favorite game would be Super Mario 64: it was just amazing when it went out. And I still enjoy it: you know, making Mario jump everywhere, with so much freedom.

Which city would you like to visit?

Lhasa.

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Doing nothing, in the (not so) wild life, with people I love.

Someone gives you $1.000.000 — what would you do with the money?

I’d ask people around me what I should do.

If traveling through time was possible — when would we be most likely to meet you?

I’ll try to go back to before the big bang, if there’s a before If it turns out to be impossible, I’ll go in the other direction and try to see if there’s some end of time. Then I’ll go back to today.

There’s a thunderstorm outside — do you turn off your computer?

Nah. But I stop to watch the storm — that’s beautiful.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

I don’t think it ever happened — or I’m still forgetting about it.

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

I always like how people react when they see poutine for the first time:

You couldn’t live without…

Air, water, food. Friends.

Which question was the hardest to answer?

This one.

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

In which language should the next interview occur? French!

Nicknames:	etrash or claes
Homepage/Blog:	Well I tried a couple of times with both. But I think it’s more fun to set up the systems. And when that is done. I have noticed that I never update it. So I have stopped trying. I’m more of a speaker than a writer.
Favorite season:	Summer
Motto:	There are no stupid questions only stupid answers.

Please introduce yourself!

I was born a warm summer day 33 years ago in a small town in between Stockholm, Gothenburg and Oslo, called Kristinehamn. Now days I live in Stockholm. Working at Swedens largest Computer Education company as a Senior Linux Trainer and a VMware Trainer.

Tell us about the background to your computer use.

I was 10 years old the first time I sat in front of a computer for the first time, and I got this feeling that this is what I want to do the rest of my life. I was totally mesmerised by the things you could do with it. It was a Commodore VIC-20. Remember this was around -85. One thing lead to another and in the late  80s and in the early 90s I was active in the Amiga Demo Scene. That got me into music so I started to play base guitar in a Punk Band. After some years I faced the fact, I would never be a Rock Star and it was time to grow up. So I started my own Computer Consulting firm. Working with computer communications (switches, routers, ip and things like that). But I was not cut out to run my own company. So in -98 I moved to Stockholm and started working as a Teacher. Teaching system and network administration on Microsoft Windows NT 4.

When and why did you start using openSUSE/SUSE Linux?

I got bored at Windows NT, so I was looking around for something new to play with.I had heard some news about GNU/Linux and I had used Unix systems before so I though that GNU/Linux could be fun to play with. So I got out on the net and started to look around. I found a German company that was about to release a new version of their Linux Distribution so I ordered my copy of S.u.S.E Linux 5.3 which was released in July -98 I got my box in August -98. I knew that I would never learn it without using it. So I installed it on my Workstation at work and at home. And since then I have been using GNU/Linux as my main OS. And I have never looked back. And in -99 I started to teach GNU/Linux.

When did you join the openSUSE community and what made you do that?

When Novell announced that they would acquire SuSE in 2004. I worked as a GNU/Linux trainer at a Novell Trainning Center. So it was natural that we changed our GNU/Linux courses to SUSE. I saw the Novell deal as a new ignition for GNU/Linux at a whole. To me it feels like the best thing that could have happened for GNU/Linux. Novell with its history and large install base. Putting their weight behind GNU/Linux. That made me go back using SUSE and becoming a CNI (Certified Novell Instructure). In the beginning I spent most of my time teaching and fixing small errors in the Novell course material in the CNI community. And then when openSUSE project was announced I jumped on that train.

In what way do you participate in the openSUSE project?

I participate in some different ways. Regular beta testing of factory and beta releases. I maintain some 30-35 packages in the openSUSE BuildService games project. And probably the same number of packages in my home project in the BuildService. I was one of the election officials in the Board election.

I’m also moderator in the Swedish SUSE forum. We are some people that are working on extending the forum to a Local openSUSE Community in Sweden. And if there are anyone out there that would like to help with that please, please contact me. I also spend a lot of time on IRC and you most often see me in #opensuse-gnome #opensuse-factory #opensuse-buildservice #opensuse-xen #opensuse-nordic and #opensuse-project so come on by and say Hello.

I have a bunch of ASUS eeePC so right now I’m working to get openSUSE running without any problem on them. If anyone would like to help with this please contact me.

I do some translation of the wiki to Swedish. I also travel around in Sweden talking about Free/Open Software, openSUSE and GNU/Linux in general. And I hope I will have more time to put into the Gnome Team.

What especially motivates you to participate in the openSUSE project?

All the great people that are part of the project. And that you get a feeling that you can make a change. And of course openSUSE is the best implementation of GNU/Linux.

What do you think was your most important contribution to the openSUSE project/community or what is the contribution that you’re most proud of?

Well, when you can’t write code but you get your first patch accepted upstreams it is a great feeling of pride (even if it was a small bash script fix).
I feel I do my best work in the Swedish forum. When people come and say that they started using openSUSE because they like the attitude and feeling we have in the forum. But the most fun is to travel around and talk about openSUSE with people.

When do you usually spend time on the openSUSE project?

All the time when I’m not sleeping or when I have a classroom full of students and I’m not teaching SUSE.

Three words to describe openSUSE? Or make up a proper slogan!

openSUSE – Linux that just works.

What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?

I would like to see software that Novell is upstream for in openSUSE, such as kablink and iFolder.

What do you think the future holds for the openSUSE project?

Today openSUSE is the best distribution and I can only see that it will get better building on all the knowledge of a growing community.

A person asks you why he/she should choose openSUSE instead of other distribution/OS. What would be your arguments to convince him/her to pick up openSUSE?

Try them all and you will come back to openSUSE as it’s the best.

Which members of the openSUSE community have you met in person?

None so far. Except all the people I have taught.

How many icons are currently on your desktop?

Oh too many. I use my Desktop as a TODO list. So right now. 41 icons without the standard 4 in Gnome. We have a saying in Sweden: A messy desktop is a sign of a messy head. And an empty desktop is a sign of an ……..  

What is the application you can’t live without? And why?

Bash. Sometimes I’m forced to work with Windows machines and I scream out loud every time I try to use a cmd prompt.

Which application or feature should be invented as soon as possible?

Something that can create more time.

Which is your preferred text editor? And why?

Vim. I know how it works.

Which famous person would you want to join the openSUSE community?

I rather have regular users than some famous person joining the community.

Which computer related skills would you like to have?

Probably to long to list here. But the top one is C.

The Internet crashes for a whole week — how would you feel, what would you do?

Nice. Finally I can read that book.

Which is your favorite movie scene?

The ending in George A. Romeros Night of the Living Dead.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Don’t like any of them. More into Splatter horror movies. But if I have to choose I would choose Star Trek.

What is your favorite food and drink?

I love all kind af food. And a Guinness to relax with is wonderful.

Favorite game or console (in your childhood and nowadays)?

Last Ninja on the Commodore 64 and Never Winter Nights.

Which city would you like to visit?

I would love to go back to Johannesburg in South Africa on vacation instead of work.

What is your preferred way to spend your vacation?

Earlier I loved to travel. Nowadays I spend to many nights in hotel rooms all over. So I prefer to stay at home.

Someone gives you $1.000.000 — what would you do with the money?

Exchange it to Euro or Swedish kronor. And then Invest them in a FLOSS company. Probably I would take some friends out on the pub first.

If traveling through time was possible — when would we be most likely to meet you?

Probably right here right now.

There’s a thunderstorm outside — do you turn off your computer?

Nope.

Have your ever missed an appointment because you forgot about it while sitting at your computer?

Oh yes. Many times.

Show us a picture of something, you have always wanted to share!

Not something I always wanted to share. But it’s some pictures.

My man, he is always happy to see me whatever have happened.

You couldn’t live without…

Except the obvious like air, food and water. Good friends

Which question was the hardest to answer?

The next one.

What other question would you like to answer? And what would you answer?

(none)